Day Camp

This last weekend I had the pleasure of being part of a quickly planned day camp. After coming back from Manila, all of the trainees got together in Olongapo to begin planning one day camp. Instead of being given a full week for planning, we had about three, but even that didn't last. Let me explain.

I have two “classes” a day. Language and Technical. Us trainees have to have about 50-50 of both each day but sometimes we spend a week in Manila, away from Language. The week we had to plan a camp was the same week we had to “make-up” Language time. That's fine had we spoke briefly about a camp in the weeks preceding but alas we hadn't. We had to attend split classes of 30-70, Language getting the lion's share.

That all aside, we still got together to plan what we could. Thankfully we have a seasoned pro in our group concerning all things camp, and she cobbled together a basic schedule and presented it to the big group. We spent a goodly amount of time arguing over this and that, feelings were hurt, voices ignored, snide remarks whispered, and so on. Whatever the cost, we made it through and had a basic schedule to work with. This was Tuesday.

Come Friday I was paired with Kaiti sitting on a small list of games to facilitate to our youngsters, expecting to be paired with 17 nine and ten year-olds the next day. We were ready, packed, and only slightly concerned.

SATURDAY: We were dropped off with our day bags at the end of a paved road, one the unpaved portion. After a 15 minute walk up one side of a hill and down the other, we had arrived. We had figured we would be there early enough to prepare for the kids arrival. They were already there.

Fizzle, it was a slow burn to get our bearings and get moving. A few commandeered the check-in process and after a few bungles, Kaiti and I found we had a new group of twelve and thirteen year-olds. Alright, let's do this.

I opened the event, it wasn't spectacular by any means. I started with a little song each trainee from our batch learned in IO (Initial Orientation), Baby Shark. Afterward we split into our groups and did our respective thing.

Here's what Kaiti and I tried:

Communicate (not a game, actually communicate)

Make a group rallying call/cheer

Color a team flag

Facilitate ten or so games

Only moderate success was achieved.

After a full day of chasing kids here and there, we had wrapped it up. The kids scampered here and there before heading to their large dorm rooms. The ladies retired to a small dorm in the nearby church, it didn't have enough beds to go around even for them. The gents had to hack it outside, sans beds. Munya and I set up camp in the church, on the stone floor, the other guys from our group slept under the stars.

I woke up and realized I've slept better. After breakfast, our group of trainees came together for some processing. Here's what we learned.

-Language is pretty important

The kids were great. They seemed to have a good time and really, that's what we wanted.